(Update, 17-Feb:  200+ likes in two days...that's really awesome.  Please remember to share this link with your social networks and do the best you can to raise awareness; if every one of the people who has liked this brings ten other people to do the same, and so on, we'll be making headlines before too long!  Keep pushing, sharing, and liking - nobody can ignore the voice of the people when it is raised in unity!)

Each day in this country millions of people go hungry while corporate food service throws out tons and tons of perfectly good food with excuses like “we will get sued” and “it will take away from our sales if we give this food away.” I believe these excuses are implausible and profit-motivated, and I’m challenging corporate food service to step up and do the right thing.  Please join me; they will respond to public pressure, if there’s enough of it.  At the end of this message post is a link to an online petition.  While it would be silly to think that it has any immediate binding power, enough signatures will send a strong message to the food service industry that this is an important issue to many people, and encourage them to step up and take action.

Hey there folks, John Henry, LowGenius.Net...you know who I am.  Let's talk about why I'm here.

I'm here tonight doing this video to issue a challenge to the food-service industry in corporate America.  Every day in this country, at least three or four times a day, every single McDonald's, Burger King, Dairy Queen, Taco Bell, gas station, truck stop...throws out tons upon tons upon tons of food, in a country where people are starving.

We complain about paying for health care, we complain about paying for social programs, and the standard line of argument is always, you know, "Well we should just let private charity take care of it and it'll be fine."  Well, in my own experience, you know, that's an exception rather than a rule, and when it comes to dealing with some of our social issues it's also an exception, and I'm kind of tired of it, I'm sick of it.

I look at a company - and again, McDonald's is the easy target, but they're all guilty of it - you've got fifty double-cheeseburgers sitting on your grill at the end of a shift, and it's gonna be "toss 'em out," because nobody will buy them, and you refuse to give them away, citing liability or claiming that's food that somebody would have bought if you hadn't given it to them, well that's bullshit and we know it's bullshit.  You do and I do.  It's just not true.

First of all, if somebody's going to sue you over your burger, they were going to sue you over your burger anyway whether it's fresh or not, because there's something wrong with your burger.  That's not a problem with homeless people trying to eat, that's a problem with your food.

Second of all, if you're going to claim that this is food that would have otherwise been sold, I'm going to have to call you a liar.  If it would have otherwise been sold, you would have sold it.  The people I'm asking you to give it to can't buy it, they can't afford it.

So, here's the challenge:  I want to see one company, at least just one company, take a lead on this.  Even if it's just a little franchise operator someplace, take a lead on this.  Commit to taking your discarded food at the end of whenever you discard it, commit to distributing that food to people who need it.

There are a million ways you could do it:  you could call a taxi and have them take it to a homeless shelter, you can start a little non-profit that goes around and collects all the food and delivers it where it's needed.

You know there's a million and a half kids in this country who are gonna go to bed tonight without a home, and I don't even want to tell you what three hundred thousand of those kids are going to do tonight in order to feed themselves.

This is supposed to be the richest country on earth, it's about time we started acting like it.  The obligation of success is that you help other people.  Noblesse oblige, folks.  You gotta reach out, you gotta help other people, because when one person fails we all fail, and ultimately we are all one society, we are all one culture, we are all one people, and when any one of our people fails to be able to live up to their human potential because they don't have resources, then we have all failed.

A lot of you know I was homeless for a while about a year and a half ago out in California, and I don't want to get into too many details because I don't want to get the guy in trouble or anything, but there was a guy there who owned a pizza chain, and every night he would swing through the parking lot of the large chain grocery store there where all the homeless people camp...with hot pizzas.

He'd have like 30 hot pizzas in his truck, and he'd just give 'em out.  "Here ya go, here ya go, you need this I got it, here ya go."  And this wasn't even throwaway food, this cat would make these pies every night.  I mean they weren't anything fancy, just a pepperoni pizza or some crazy bread or something, but you know what?  That's what we all need to be doing.  If everybody in this country who owned a business did things like that, we wouldn't have homeless kids, we wouldn't have hungry people, we wouldn't have kids on the streets turning tricks to eat, you know?

There's a million and a half people in this country between eleven and seventeen on any given night who have no homes; how many empty houses are there in this country?  How many apartment complexes are there with empty rooms in them that could be potentially used as short-term shelter for these people?  Why am I not seeing property managers stepping up and saying "well, you know, I've got a thirty percent vacancy rate, why don't we get somebody in here to manage that and offer some of these people a place to be?"  It's just sitting there empty anyway.  And then we hit the utilities and get them to pitch in a little bit.  They're all making money.

They're all making money.

So.  Back to the focus at hand:  what I want to see is *somebody* - I don't care if it's Yum! Brands, or McDonald's, or Burger King, or whoever - I want to see somebody step up and say, "you know what, we're going to stop throwing food away, in a country and world where people are starving.  We're going to stop throwing food away, and we're going to get that food out the people who need it."

And they'll be happy to have it.

Step up.

Thanks.

Click here to sign the online petition.  It takes only a few seconds and costs nothing.  Thank you.